Food Review: Tabac, Glasgow

Gillian Loney

There are no weekend reservations at Tabac, one of Glasgow’s buzz-worthy city centre restaurants promising something new.

The other half and I were a bit dismayed to hear it, picturing half our Friday night spent lingering at the bar and waiting for a table.

Thankfully, we had barely ordered our first schooners (with a grumble from Mr Where’s My Pint, although it has to be said that Tabac’s selection of draught is excellent) when a rare table became free.

In fact, bar and tables are one and the same at the small Mitchell Lane establishment — and it’s one of the few criticisms I could make of Tabac; that jostling elbows and after-work drinks crowds were never far from our mountain of food.

Okay, so the lighting is a little low too - more urban cool than able-to-see-your-dinner — but it adds to the atmosphere of a place where ‘Please God make tomorrow better’ looms large in neon letters over the windows.

Between us, we ordered up more than enough food for a table of four (lesson learned but I regret nothing), starting with a small plate offering of deep fried lamb ribs.

Oh, to be facing another plate of them; soft meat crumbling from the bone punctuated by a coating of nutty dukkah and pops of pomegranate — an inspired combination, unlike the many ribs combos doing the rounds in Glasgow’s dirty food favourites.